Duncan cool to European-style financial transaction tax

Dwight Duncan, Ontario’s finance minister, said he doesn’t support a financial transaction tax contemplated by some European countries too boost government coffers.

“We would be very reluctant to look at that,” he said after speaking at a regulatory conference in Toronto.

News reports suggest a couple of U.S. lawmakers will join the movement this week toward a transaction tax on financial firms that is intended to raise revenues during the economic slowdown. Germany and France are already pushing for global adoption of such a tax which was proposed by the European Union in September.

The financial transaction tax intended to go into effect in the euro zone in 2014 could reportedly raise nearly $60-billion euros.

In his prepared speech, Mr. Duncan played up Canada’s strengths, saying interest in acquiring TMX Group Inc. “is a testament to the soundness of Ontario’s financial services sector and the international prominence of the Toronto Stock Exchange.”

His remarks came the day after Maple Group, a consortium spearheaded by large Canadian banks and pension funds, won the support of the TMX board of directors for a proposed $3.8-billion takeover.

Mr. Duncan was an outspoken critic of a previously planned merger between TMX and the London Stock Exchange.

That deal died in June after it failed to win sufficient support from shareholders.

On Tuesday, Mr. Duncan said he was “delighted” shareholders had a choice in who the country’s stock exchanges would be sold to, “and that one of the choices involved the Canadian financial services sector.”

Asked whether the Maple plan will result in a concentration of market power, Mr. Duncan said it would be up “the federal anti-combines people” to determine that through a planned Competition Bureau review.